


soft midnight words

by onetiredboy



Series: slowly this time, naturally this time [3]
Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Emotional Vulnerability, Exactly What It Says on the Tin, Fluff, Intimacy, Light Angst, M/M, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, and very deeply head over his heels in love, peter is a romantic, really soft folks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-02
Updated: 2019-11-02
Packaged: 2021-01-18 19:26:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21282008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onetiredboy/pseuds/onetiredboy
Summary: "I already knew the kinds [of words] that they must have shared before – the soft midnight words that barely make it past the pillow; and at some point the big, explosive ones that tear a life in two." -- Juno Steel and the Midnight FoxJuno and Peter have already had some big, explosive words. So they do things in reverse: who can blame them? Peter Nureyev has never been one for conforming, after all.
Relationships: Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel
Series: slowly this time, naturally this time [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1529069
Comments: 30
Kudos: 290





	soft midnight words

**Author's Note:**

> me: i have no time to write!! i'm graduating highschool and also i'm doing nanowrimo and i'm not counting fanfic in my 50k so i definitely have no time to write ANY MORE PENUMBRA FIC  
me, gay, 3 hours later:

Every thief has slow moments. Minutes, hours, days between jobs, when time is spent (usually) searching back through news streams to check for any loose ends from previous jobs that may need tidying up, or idly picking up a hobby or two that might come useful in some distant case, catching up on episodes of streams missed, catching up on sleep.

That last one is a personal favourite, and nowadays most often I don’t do it alone.

“Oof—”

A bundle of blankets gets dumped on me, and through it a pair of warm arms find me and latch on.

“You’re cold,” Juno mumbles.

“So you often say,” I readjust myself so that I’m not drowning in fabric and find my way to Juno’s side, curling my cold arms around his stomach so that he hisses.

To be perfectly honest, I have always preferred solitude. There is definitely a comfort in having a bed to yourself. But with the addition of a warm-bodied ex-P.I to my daily routine over the last few months, specifically one whose intrusive thoughts can be spooked away with a few soothing repetitive touches, I have had the opportunity to learn a lot about myself. Playing with his hair, letting our legs tangle between us, circling the constellation of scars on his chest; these are all things I’ve realised I rather enjoy. Especially so after he woke up one afternoon after a nap and kissed me, muttering, ‘you know, I never looked forward to falling asleep before you’ against my lips.

After that, I found it more difficult to keep my hands to myself than not, despite Buddy’s stern lecture about PDA aboard the Carte Blanche and about the fact that at least she had the common decency to confine her relationship with Vespa to their quarters (though something makes it hard for me to believe Vespa is much the touchy-feely type).

“Well, you’re often cold,” Juno argues.

He’d argue with me over it for the next twenty minutes if I allowed him. So I don’t. I just hum and smile and cuddle up close to him.

Time passes. I don’t fall asleep, neither does he. He doesn’t sleep easily, my dear detective. My eyes wander, as they often do, over his body. Cataloguing, committing new details to memory. The arm closest to me has a tattoo – I’ve known that since I first saw him like this – but now I pay close attention to it. The swirls of colour, the figure wrapped up in them. The tattoo is faded but I recognise the figure from ancient Earth mythology. It’s not so much a specialty of mine as an occasional interest.

“Benzaiten,” I say.

Juno starts. He sits up in bed, the blankets falling into his lap. He looks at me like he’s seen a ghost. “What?”

I sit up beside him, “Your… tattoo,” I point. “Benzaiten, isn’t it?”

“Oh,” he pauses for a moment, then looks relieved, turning his head away from me. His shoulders slump and he sighs. After a moment, he laughs, “Right. Of course you’d know that. Of course.”

It… seems to be a sensitive subject. A lot of things are with Juno, and I’ve learnt by now not to press him on his triggers, no matter how burning my curiosity. I lean over and kiss his shoulder. “Alright?”

“Yeah,” Juno sighs. He turns his head back into me, managing to kiss the side of my head. He hesitates there for a moment, then…

“My brother,” Juno says.

“Mm?” I lean back from him.

“His name…” he hesitates, “Was, um. That.”

“Benzaiten?”

He nods.

I rarely get to see Juno Steel vulnerable, even now. I get glimpses of it when we sleep together, stolen moments of it in early mornings and late nights. It is a gift as precious as it is rare and I don’t take it for granted. Right now, he stares off across the room, his eyebrows drawn together. I want to make sure he isn’t getting too lost in his head, but I also don’t want to startle him out of some important reflection.

“Was he older or younger?” I ask quietly.

“Younger,” Juno says, with a kind of decisiveness that seems to imply that that was once cause for debate between the two of them. I tip my head to one side.

“Twins?”

“We—y…yeah. How’d you know?”

I quirk a smile at him, “Lucky guess.” And it is – he’s the detective of the two of us for a reason; my deductions are often wrong. But I have my moments.

He frowns at me, then leans over and buries his head in my shoulder. “He had one too.”

“One what?”

“Tattoo. Of Juno – the goddess, I mean. It was a lot uglier than mine, which kind of checks out,” he sits back up and then leans against the head of the bed. His fingers trace over the tattoo even though he stays looking ahead, following the outline perfectly. His fingers have traced that pattern many times. “Ended up just being another constant reminder.”

I reach out and brush his fingers away. I swipe my thumb over the pattern and then trace it myself. “What was he like?”

“A drama queen,” Juno says, and then laughs. “He was so bubbly, and funny, and always had something smart to say. He was easily the most popular of the two of us, and basically the only reason I had any friends at all in school. For a while. Then I got into a few fights and kids started saying things. I started sneaking out of school for lunches. But…” Juno smiles softly, “He came and found me. Started eating with me, just the two of us. And eventually Mick and Sasha too. We called ourselves the Sneakers.”

I raise my eyebrows at him and he laughs.

“Oh, shut up, Peter, I know it’s a dumb name. We were eight.”

_Peter_. I’m still not quite over the sound of his voice as he says that, no matter how many times it’s been now and in how many different ways – through laughter; through tears; cut off and gasped. I grin at him and lean over to kiss his jawbone, “I didn’t say anything.”

“No, but you wear everything you think on your face.”

No, I don’t. I know how to keep my face completely calm – excusing the few moments of extreme emotion I’ve embarrassed myself with over the last few months (Nova Zolatovna comes to mind) – I know how to hide everything I think. But not from him.

“Mm,” I pull back from him, just a little bit, enough to catch his eye. He’s not wearing his eyepatch; I’ve long grown used to not noticing the empty eye-socket looking at me, “What am I thinking now, then?”

“Right now?” Juno asks. His teeth poke out when he gives me his sly smile, “I’ll take a wild guess.”

He kisses me. It’s like every kiss with Juno has ever been, right from the start: soft, and intimate. It’s the kind of kiss that punches the air out of you, the kind of kiss that makes you think _oh. Oh, I don’t have a chance against this._ When he makes those little sounds against me, quiet and needy and _wanting_, I want to lock them away in my heart and keep them nestled in there forever.

Juno breaks away from me. I want to keep kissing him – I want to kiss him all over; I want to kiss him until his back arches off of this bed and kiss a thousand curses off of his lips and kiss him until he knows even a tenth of the way I feel.

He leans his head against mine, “I wish you could’ve met him, Peter,” he says, and his voice breaks.

“Oh, Juno.”

He smiles sadly at me and breathes shakily, “We used to plan our weddings together. It made it so much harder when—”

He doesn’t continue; he doesn’t need to, I know the story of Juno’s last wedding. I only nod and coax his head into my shoulder, twisting my fingers into his hair. His hands hold onto my waist, just beneath my ribs, and he steadies himself, breathing long and deep into the dip of my collarbone.

“Do you think he would like me?” I ask.

Juno lifts his head up and then laughs suddenly, with a voice full of water and right on the verge of tears, “I don’t know.”

“Excuse me?”

“I don’t know,” Juno laughs again, a little less shakily this time, “Maybe not. He’d probably think you’re full of yourself.”

I scoff: the idea in itself is ridiculous, “And you, Juno? Do you think that?”

Juno looks at me sideways, sheepishly. It’s answer enough and my mouth falls open in exaggerated shock, “You fiend!”

“But I love it about you!” Juno tries, turning his puppy-dog look on me, and I roll my eyes at him. He leans back against the head of the bed again, his head rolling against the wall. “No, anyway, Benten would like you,” he says, decisively. “He’d just take one look at how happy you make me and I know he’d like you.”

It touches me more than I care to admit. I want to ask him: _how happy _do_ I make you? Is it enough? What else could I do, how could I make you feel happier? How could I make you as happy as you make me just by looking my way? _

I don’t. I just lean against the wall beside him and search for his hand to tangle our fingers between us, “It sounds like he cared about you a lot.”

“Sometimes he was the only person who did.”

More things I can’t put into words: _I wish I could’ve been there. I would have made sure you never felt lonely like that. I would’ve made sure nothing bad ever happened to you. _But that’s a selfish thing. He’s come a long way by himself, and I could never take that from him.

He looks at me, “Do you ever wonder if you had any siblings?”

I look at him and smile, “I can’t bear to consider it.”

He just nods. He pulls our twisted hands to his mouth and kisses the back of my hand.

“Too much considering today already,” he mumbles, and I pick up on my cue.

“Mm,” I agree, and I roll over in the bed to lean over him. “Too much coherent thought.”

His thoughts have never been hard to read. Juno grins at me salaciously, “Any ideas on how to put a stopper in all that thinking, handsome?”

“A few.”

“I’d love to hear them.”

And I kiss him. He wraps his arms around me and pulls me with him as he shuffles down into bed (a more comfortable, horizontal position) and I try not to bite his lip open with my teeth as he does. It wouldn’t be the first time.

He breaks from me for just a moment and then pulls me into a kiss again – much more organised.

All the treasures in the galaxy that I’ve stolen and this, somehow, the best one.

Juno breaks the kiss again, and it’s always the little things that get me: the soft sound of our lips unsealing, the way his eyes crease when he smiles. “I love you,” Juno whispers against my lips, and I start to cry.

“Oh—Peter,” he rolls us over, his hands – warm, strong hands, rough but gentle on either side of my face. His look is worried, his eyebrows close together in concern, “What’s wrong?”

I shake my head. “I love you, too,” I manage. “I’m so lucky.”

When I was a weak, skinny thing on Brahma, all long hair and bright eyes and vivid dreams of the future, I used to believe in this. I used to spend hours staring out of windows in hideaways, staring up at the stars and believing in _love. _

A lot of things changed. I became someone cynical; someone who believed only in disappointments and broken hearts and false promises and someone who believed that love was lie. And despite it all, I found myself here: this accidental thievery, this undeserved jewel in my arms.

Juno laughs, breathless, “_You’re _lucky. Peter Nureyev, unsung hero of the solar system, handsome enough to pick up any guy he wanted: a king, an emperor, who stumbled his way to Mars and picked up a flea-bitten P.I who broke his heart and almost ruined his life—_you’re _lucky?”

“The luckiest,” I promise him, my hands reaching up to brush over his cheekbones. The tears are warm as they run down the side of my face, “Peter Nureyev, half-starved orphan from Brahma, isolated himself from every person who looked his way, who tripped his way to Mars and met a lady who changed everything, who took that lady’s eye and asked the impossible from him and hated him when he couldn’t give it, only for that lady—that Juno Steel—to leave his whole city and planet behind, to forgive him over and over and love him through it all—sometimes I’m worried if I hold you too tightly I’ll burst whatever bubble I’m in and wake up alone again.”

Juno makes a wounded sound and I want to explain to him I didn’t mean it like that, that the ghost of the Hyperion City hotel room stopped haunting me a long while ago, but he kisses me before I can, his thumbs wiping away my tears.

“You can hold me as tightly as you’d like, Peter,” he manages through kisses, “I’m not going anywhere. Never again.”

It’s an impossible promise. In the field we work, in the life we live, nobody can promise eternity. But it’s what I need to hear. So I push down the voice of reason and I tighten my arms around him as much as I can. The future hangs over our shoulders, and it’s a future in which words and oaths and potentials have no meaning. But right now, in this room, there is only now. There is only Juno Steel, and only Peter Nureyev, and for right now, there is only each-other.

Life can wait one night.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm adding it as a part of my s3 series but you don't necessarily have to have read the other fics or consider them as linear if thats what u dont want


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